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Comment by drchopchop | Hacker News Reader

Yep, I spent many years at a large, public US mobile game company and it was the same. We had a considerable number of players who had total spend in the 5-figure range, and a few into the 6's. And that's on one single game.

The constant rationalization around the office was basically something like: "They're paying for fun, it would otherwise be drinks/movies/real gambling/etc, we're just a different medium". This, of course, completely ignored the boatload of psychological exploitation tricks that we used to keep people playing (and paying). The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine. The meta-game was designed to constantly tantalize you with something just out of reach. The monetization was high-pressure, time-sensitive, and used false discounts to increase value ("Get this $20.00 pack for $1.99! Only for the next 60 minutes!")

It got very draining after a while, and I'm much happier now that I've left the industry.

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I left casual games because of this; every partner and publisher we worked with was heavily pressuring us to optimize for whales. They wanted the long tale for marketing, and the whales for revenue; and once hooked, the core interaction loop was to be as addictive as possible.

When I left it was Candy Crush that was the top of the field; and we were in awe. They were _always_ rewarding players, and were pushing microtransactions everywhere. It was flashy like a slot machine, and provided a constant stream of "rewards" for continued engagement.

It was a disgusting industry then; it probably still is now. I went into game dev to tell stories and explore worlds, not to sell dope.

The frustrating part is there are lots of people making games to tell stories and explore worlds, but they fall into the void almost inmediately after launch due to the slot machine games taking the lion's share of the attention and money.

Thankfully, PC Gaming strangely hasn't been dominated by this phenomenon, despite EA's, Activision's, and Epic's best efforts. Fortnite is addiction-tuned F2P casinowear, and it's done gangbusters, but the industry hasn't managed to copy that formula with great success.

At least fornite cosmetics have limited gameplay impact (although not zero impact).

It is quite possible to be a relatively competitive player without spending a single cent (and without needing excessive grinding to do so, or at least, no more grinding than a paying player).

This is a lot better than most mobile games (pay more or wait # hours to continue), or games with lootboxes whose results give serious competitive advantage. (There are far too many of the latter to even list.)

But I do dislike any game that depends on any form of microtransaction model. I've no real issue with meaningful DLC for single player games (i.e. the equivlent of the old expansion packs), but otherwise a game should either be a one time cost, or a simple subscription. Not some unholy hybrid of the two as has become all too common.

Ah, but it's a social experience. The primary capital isn't one's competitive standing, it's the uniqueness of your gear.

Fortnite's store UI is designed around limited time access panic sales.

This can be easily managed without microttansaction. Simply award in game point that allows a player to buy cosmetics. Do not create any way for players to trade money for in game points.

No profit vs Big profit

Indeed. In fact, we've even spotted kids using "default" as a slur - which is exactly what you design for if you're building a microtransaction slurry game.

My daughter recently encountered this in Roblox. Her friends gave her a hard time for her default skin. The peer pressure to spend money is real.

> although not zero impact

For reference https://twitter.com/jmantheguy/status/970497516566347776?s=2...

Epic picked literally the most vulnerable target audience. That's what made Fortnite a hit.

The reward loop works much better when it can be in your pocket and be accessed during moments of boredom/idleness. The lack of friction before getting pulled in is at least as much of a causative factor as the three issues the article highlights. Every little bit of friction diminishes its effectiveness.

One thing that's ironic with a lot of mainstream AAA gaming though, is that even though they aren't copying the revenue model the game design conventions still tend to focus on length of engagement and playtime. I'm sure there's a reason compelling it but I'm not sure what.

I’ve read that the reason is to extend playtime for as long as possible to limit resale market.

Maybe with the advent of digital purchase (and the death of selling your used copy) we’ll see a return to designing games for fun.

Fortnite is a mobile game; it's why Epic is having a fight with Apple.

Pretty much all people I ever heard about or new who has issue with gaming were addicted to something like lol, wow or pubg.

The people who play whole night and that are irritable and underperforming during day, who made gaming their whole life, are not playing causual games. They are playing console and pc games.

Those folks are paying their time into the game sure - but casual games in IAPs can drain bank accounts surprisingly fast from folks that'd normally consider themselves above microtransactions. There is a lot of very sneaky psychological tricks that go into trying to get folks to spend an insane amount of money - I'd compare that to something like CS:GO which is trying to get everyone to spend a little bit of money but is less oriented to harness big spenders outside of the marketplace which isn't all that promoted in game.

Well i mean csgo stuff holds value and can be sold off so its not really comparable to normal mtx.

I really don't think Fortnite is as bad as you're making it out to be (certainly not even in the same league as most mobile microtransaction fests). The core of Fortnite is a pretty good (imo, although I prefer Apex Legends) battle royale fps, and the microtransactions are purely cosmetic items.

In contrast a lot of the big mobile games are barely even games. They're just AI controlling your gambled for gacha characters, which are very not cosmetic only. And the games that aren't AI controlled are still just basic turn based battle mechanics with very little strategy (and what is there is vastly less important than just getting better characters, probably by gambling).

I suspect the market of "people who play mobile games" and the market of "people who play PC games" are not even the same kinds of people, and if you tried to release the same stuff that makes money on mobile on PC, you wouldn't actually attract many new players. Likewise if the mobile market ceased to exist overnight, I doubt the players would be that attracted to many PC/console games. They're getting different things out of them.

Of course this is all just speculation, I don't really know.

Also bear in mind Fortnite was in no means special in offering cosmetic items for microtransactions. The game just got so big that it's a convenient punching bag.

The Fortnite store is special; it's an industry-leading example in exploiting social anxiety through time-limited unique cosmetics.

What's important about Fortnite isn't the core game, it's the social experience and the role that the cosmetics and store play in that.

> not to sell dope.

Is there no Breaking Bad effect because it's all legal?

I was in early and rode the wave from selling real games for $4.99, then $2.99, then $0.99, and finally... free. At which point the “real” part of making games was out the window and it was all user acquisition, LTVs, retention, and ugh.

Couldn’t have been more happy to get out of casual and F2P games four years ago. I honestly thought I might be done making games after that experience.

Thankfully, between doing the indie thing for a few years and starting a new studio last year, it became clear it was the medium and not the craft that was the problem.

> Thankfully, between doing the indie thing for a few years and starting a new studio last year, it became clear it was the medium and not the craft that was the problem.

Do you mean to say it's specifically a mobile issue?

I would say it's a free to play issue. A lot of these games exist on multiple platforms, basically wherever microtransactions are supported. Gems of War, for example, exists on mobile, on PC (Windows store, Steam), on Playstation, Switch and Xbox...

100% mobile. I have no issues with F2P games that aren't predatory (like LoL or Rocket League). I've spent hundreds on these games for silly cosmetics that don't affect gameplay.

> The game mechanics were literally a rigged slot machine.

This is an accurate description. So many games where people have to pay for the chance to get something. It's even worse than actual gambling since the prize isn't even money. All people get is some numbers in a database.

Another oppressive feature found in most exploitative games is the timer. Through a timer, the progression of free players is rate-limited. There's almost always some kind of resource that's used up whenever players do anything and when they run out of it the timer reveals itself. The game refills the resource on a regular basis.

This creates habits in players. People start out playing normally and next thing they know they're setting alarms to wake them up at 3 AM to do game tasks because that's when the timer resets. This is done deliberately with the goal to increase the number of players who login every day through a mix of positive and negative reinforcement. The timed refills themselves act as a periodic reward which is simple enough. More insidious however is how usually the timers will not start counting down to the next reward until players play the game. Every second the timer is not running is wasted and delays the next reward.

Paying customers can reset this timer at will. They are therefore able to progress at an uncapped rate. This implies the game's true form is a spending competition: the whale who gives the most money to the company for the longest time will win.

Video game addiction is already a recognized medical diagnosis. I have no doubt this trash is at least partly responsible for that. The reputation of the games industry is only gonna go downhill from there.

It may be an artifact of the division between body and mind, common in Western cultures. Any problem related to the psyche is treated differently (ie taken less seriously) from problems related to the body. I wonder how many millenia this ostensibly subtle difference in conception will keep on giving us pain and mental anguish. Its so deeprooted, I wonder what it will take to pull it out.

This division is on the verge of self destruction under the own weight of its inconsistencies.

There are plenty of people hooked on this stuff in the east. Addiction doesn't care about your philosophy. Some people are just more mentally available to addiction in all it's myriad forms.

I was refering to the tendency to not treat psychological issues as serious as physical ones. Obviously addiction knows no boundaries.

I was watching a livestreamer that currently organizes their schedule almost entirely around F2P mobile games. I find it hard to tell such a person on an individual level that they are being exploited, because that sounds like moral posturing to me. But from the perspective of the company I could imagine how the effects of time limited sales and events could drive their KPIs on a macro level. How many of those people contributing to the 5 and 10 percent upticks were "exploited" in the truest sense of the word, as in they could not help themselves even if they wanted to? I have to wonder how many of these people would rather stop but are addicted or otherwise not conscious, versus those on the spectrum that see the games as a legitimate outlet for entertainment (and can stop themselves from spending too much).

I don't play them though, since I know I'd spend too much money and time on objects intangible.

The thing that strikes me the most about F2P is how societally acceptible it is. The people for whom the notion of "casinos" doesn't fit their interests can now have their own preferentially targeted equivalent of a casino in their pockets at all times, branded with things like television show franchises that ground them in a sense of familiarity.

Addiction by Design by Dow Schull is an interesting book on this.

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